1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures discussed herein relate to a fabrication method of an electromechanical transducer film, an electromechanical transducer element, a liquid ejection head, and an inkjet recording apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electromechanical transducer elements in general have a layered structure having an electromechanical transducer film disposed between electrodes.
There is known in the art an example of a method of depositing an electromechanical transducer film that includes forming a liquid-repellent film having lyophilic openings in accordance with an electromechanical transducer pattern, and supplying a sol-gel liquid serving as a raw material of the electromechanical transducer film into the lyophilic openings.
Further, an inkjet method has attracted attention as a method of supplying a sol-gel liquid into lyophilic openings of the liquid-repellent film because the inkjet method is capable of selectively supplying a sol-gel liquid into the lyophilic openings of the liquid-repellent film and is also capable of reducing unproductive usage of materials or disadvantageous effects on environmental burdens.
However, the liquid-repellent film is generally transparent. Hence, when a sol-gel liquid is supplied into the lyophilic openings of the liquid-repellent film by the inkjet method, it may be necessary to form an alignment mark in a portion of the liquid-repellent film so as to allow the alignment mark to serve as a reference point for detecting the portion where the lyophilic openings are formed.
Patent Document 1, for example, discloses a method of forming a thin film pattern that includes a liquid-repellent treatment step to provide a substrate with liquid-repellency, a lyophilic pattern forming step to initially dispose a metallic mask on the liquid-repellent substrate and to form a lyophilic part for a thin film pattern and a lyophilic part for an alignment mark on the metallically masked liquid-repellent substrate, an alignment mark forming step to form an alignment mark in the lyophilic part for the alignment mark by screen printing, and a functional fluid disposing step to dispose a functional fluid in the lyophilic part for the thin film pattern by a liquid ejection method based on the alignment mark.
However, the method disclosed in Patent Document 1 may require a metallic mask provided with openings having the same shape as a shape of the lyophilic part when the lyophilic part for the thin film pattern and the lyophilic part for the alignment mark are formed in a part of the liquid-repellently treated substrate. Hence, the thin film pattern is limited to the pattern of the metallic mask to be formed, which does not allow an immediate design change. Further, the disclosed method also may increase the number of materials because the metallic mask needs to be separately prepared. In addition, the disclosed method employs screen printing in the alignment mark forming step that differs from the method of forming the thin film pattern, which may increase complexity of the steps of the method.